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Hootsuite Acquires Social Platform Brightkit (MediaPost)
Social media marketing platform Hootsuite on Thursday announced its latest acquisition: Brightkit, a platform that powers customized social campaigns incorporating contests and sweepstakes and properties like Facebook, Twitter, Vine and Instagram. The platform makes available about 13 types of social contests, sweepstakes and galleries to drive leads across microsites, Facebook, mobile devices, and more. WebProNews The acquisition actually took place in July, but is just now being announced. “Hootsuite Campaigns helps brands take content to an audience that far exceeds their following on owned channels,” Hootsuite explains. “Marketers can quickly create flexible campaigns that engage participants and encourage social amplification. Hootsuite Campaigns are optimized for both mobile and web, and are designed to be hosted on Facebook or on microsites.” VentureBeat Hootsuite is also pointing to a boffo year-in-progress, with new executive hires, a growing Pacific region office in Singapore, support in five languages, and such new enterprise customers as the Red Carnation Hotels, the Brooklyn Public Library, and Hyland Software. Just a year ago, Hootsuite scored $ 165 million from a venture capital group that included Insight Venture Partners and Accel Partners. ZDNET Hootsuite’s biggest challenge with its enterprise software will be taking on larger vendors. Everyone from Oracle to Salesforce to SAP to name just a few has social marketing management software. TechCrunch The acquisition is a coming home of sorts for Brightkit: the company was spun out of Invoke (originally under the name Memelabs). Invoke is the same company that originally created Hootsuite. The two had also been working together prior to the acquisition: Brightkit was added to Hootsuite’s app directory in 2013.

Twitpic Folds After Twitter Threat (SocialTimes)
The popular photo-sharing host Twitpic announced Thursday that it will be shuttering the six-year-old service on Sep. 25. Twitpic founder Noah Everett was not shy about the reason for the sudden shut-down: Twitter.

Facebook Begins Rollout of Privacy Checkup (AllFacebook)
Facebook Thursday announced the rollout of Privacy Checkup, a tool aimed at helping users better control who sees their content, which the social network began testing as early as March and officially introduced in May. Product manager Paddy Underwood provided a guide for how to get started with Privacy Checkup in a Newsroom post.

Social Media Campaigns By ISIS Supporters, State Department Ramp Up (New York Daily News)
There’s another war being waged because of Islamic terrorists — on Twitter. At least 28,000 Twitter accounts supporting the Islamic State, known as ISIS, have popped up since the beheading of American journalist James Foley, according to NBC News.

If You’re a Social TV Fan, Then You Need to Vote for This SXSW Panel (LostRemote)
Jesse Redniss, chief strategy officer at Mass Relevance, was recently at a Twitter event and struck up a conversion with Univision’s David Beck about what’s really missing from social TV conferences. Redniss and Beck started to discuss the thrill of coming up with the initial concepts for social TV programs before crafting them into the finished product.

Getty Images Sues Microsoft Over New Bing Photo Widget (Re/code)
A new Microsoft product that allows website publishers to embed digital photographs on their sites is a “massive infringement” of copyrighted images, Getty Images claimed in a lawsuit filed in federal court in New York on Thursday. The Bing Image Widget, released on Aug. 22, gives publishers the ability to create a panel on their websites that displays digital images supplied by Microsoft’s Bing search engine, according to the lawsuit.